Seen Read Heard -- December 2023

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
A Promised Land by Barack Obama

Elon Musk is a biography, and Musk gave Isaacson, a remarkable biographer, unfettered access to his past and his daily life for two years. A Promised Land is a memoir of Barack Obama's first two to three years as President.

For me, Musk was almost a must-read. This man is so deeply involved in so much of what our world is experiencing right now and is likely to experience in the future: electric cars, privatization of space travel, solar power, artificial intelligence, and X (formerly Twitter). I like Musk as I finished reading the book, but I am awed by the impact he is having and fascinated by how he operates as a complete grinder, driven to succeed, expecting others to keep up with his devotion of time and expectation of excellence. I was grateful to learn about the man, his style, his incredible mind, and his undoubted significance in our lives, and I am grateful not to have him as a colleague. 

As a memoir of another person younger than me who has had a significant impact on the country and the world, Obama’s book was a less compelling read for me. I expect a politician to note his successes and downplay his shortcomings and failures; Obama does plenty of that.  Refreshing, though, were the passages in which he is more interested in talking about his wife and children (and dog) than he is about himself, along with the times he is particularly self-critical. 

Both books felt long. Elon Musk was written in unusually short chapters, 95 of them, each at about two or three pages. That approach worked for me, a slow reader, as I could easily find time for a chapter here and there. A Promised Land was mostly chronological, but I didn’t know I was starting a book that was only going to cover part of Obama’s time in office. I learned after finishing the book that there is a second volume planned. The writing is easy and often insightful, but it also felt to me like much of what was shared was a sort of refresher of what we could read in the news during his time in office.

Elon Musk: Excepts of My Underlining

“It's a big theme for him to never have his decisions guided by fear.” (quoting one of Elon’s cousins, 25)

“...[H]e was saved by science fiction, that wellspring of wisdom for game playing kids with intellects on hyperdrive.” (30) (I am always reading biographies and memoirs for their subject’s sources of wisdom.)

“From the very beginning of his career, Musk was contemptuous of the concept of work-life balance.” (64)

“Life cannot be merely about solving problems .. .. It also had to be about pursuing dreams.” (94)

“It’s about building the machine that builds the machine.” (157) (Musk has an amazing ability to design a better way to build things.)

“Musk’s policy [was] that the designers . . . should work hand in glove with the engineers.” (200) (No doubt the better designs often come from this collaboration.)

“Don’t worry about sales factors . . . Awesome products grow with word of mouth.” (370) (No ads for Tesla!)

“The only thing we are on earth for is to reproduce.” (470) (Musk has fathered 11 children.)

“He liked taking the fiction out of science fiction.” (485)

A Promised Land: Excepts from My Underlining

“To be a workhorse, not a show horse, that was my goal.” (55)

“I knew there would come a time when I would disappoint them, falling short of the image that my campaign and I had helped to construct.” (136)

“[I needed to] constantly take stock . . . and remind myself of the distance between the airbrushed image and the flawed, often uncertain person I was.” (196)

“Sometimes your most important work involved the stuff nobody noticed.” (387)

“A breadth of experience, familiarity with the vagaries of life, the combination of brains and heart - that, I thought, was where wisdom came from.” (389) (Another source of wisdom)

“[I was] wary of the notion that good resided only on our side and bad on theirs.” (456)

“You should do something, Daddy.” Sasha, 486)

One of the reasons I read biographies and memoirs of people who have reached a certain level of success or prominence is to see where they failed. Musk’s failures are many, personal and professional. He goes all-in on whatever he is doing, not always considering the downsides to those with whom he has a relationship or of the words he might say (or tweet). Obama’s failures were on prominent display for the most part. Communication, along with his “own high-mindedness” (525) on occasion would often be the heart of his most challenging times.